Pulsar Wrist Watches

Pulsar Watches and Time

Back in the '70s, when the whole Space Age thing was hitting its peak, the Hamilton Watch Company came up with a new style of watch. In 1972, they released their first "Pulsar" watch into the marketplace. This watch was the first of its kind--electronic quartz with a light emitting diode (LED), digital display and a radically new Space Age look. A contemporary press report described the source of the watch name as "those strange distant spinning stars which send quick and regular radio 'bleeps' from outer space." Sound far-out to you?

Well, not to the general public. Those strange spinning stars inspired an incredible trend. Pulsar® watches were a huge hit, and to this day the original watches are highly prized collectors' items. In time, the original boom waned; but not before the Pulsar brand name had made an enduring impression worldwide.

In 1979, following a series of changes in brand ownership, Pulsar watches with new looks and new features were reintroduced to the United States market by SEIKO Corporation of America. This series was the first full line of all-quartz men's and ladies' wristwatches.

At the same time, steps were taken for a major launch in Europe. In 1980, Pulsar was launched in the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and other important European markets. The brand grew rapidly, as it did in the United States. Today, Pulsar is a major brand that is actively marketed in all Western European countries with broad support and services supplied by SEIKO Europe, Ltd.

Pulsar continues to create new collections of watches in a variety of styles. Each collection strives to improve on the last - still inspired by the stars that inspired the original.

Considering Pulsar watches are inspired by a remarkable star, we decided to dedicate some space to, well, space.
So here's some information on pulsars that we thought you'd find interesting. Actually, it's stuff that we know and feel like telling someone about.

Pulsars weren't always pulsars. They are actually the cores of collapsed stars, like our Sun. When a star burns up all of its hydrogen energy source, it collapses with a violent explosion, scattering the outer portions of the star into space. The core that is left after the blast is much smaller and incredibly dense. While a normal star rotates approximately once a day, a pulsar can rotate as quickly as 1,000 times a second. Now, that's fast.

With each rotation, a pulsar sends out an extremely regular pulse of radio waves. These waves can be detected here on Earth by radio telescopes. These pulses provide an unmatched standard of timekeeping accuracy.